About Me

Thursday, 20 October 2016

Molar Panels

As a child
medic's came to my school to check us over regularly. They were looking for Tuberculosis (TB or Consumption)
in the time before antibiotics. They were neurotic about this and my school was
labelled high risk because of migrants fleeing the London Blitz.

If diagnosed you were banged up either in the
local Open Air Residential School for as long as it took or an isolation ward
if serious. My teeth were checked for signs of this or that. When selected for
a secondary school education, another check including my teeth, the advanced
thinking local authority having health as a priority before the NHS was created.
There were later checks.

When
conscripted for the Army, everything was checked, I spare you the details. This
happened again when posted out of the UK, twice more and then later before
demob' for all of us. The Army was neurotic about Venereal Disease, STI or STD
nowadays, especially syphilis, there was a lot of it about, including the
Tertiary form. The Secret files I read during boring duty weekends were
fascinating in their accounts of the relevant issues.

In London
afterwards the reported roundups of street sex workers for medical checks by
The Met' Police were said to be triggered by yet another Tory minister having
caught a dose of something nasty. These involved mouth checks due to their
curious habits. See the 1959 Butler Street Offences Act.

For my first
job, another set of checks, for later jobs more checks. Along with this toothy experience were at
least a dozen dentists here and there prodding and searching about and then endlessly
reminding me it was time for another go.

In later life there
has been an interesting selection of hospitals, all of which wanted to examine
the anatomy on an extensive basis, including teeth. If I could have claimed to
be a refugee child interested only in slave or sex trafficking, terrorism, gang
warfare, death to the infidels and such like, it would have been a lot easier.

In the present
furore it seems to have been forgotten that many cases of young migrants will
be obviously children. Equally it ought be obvious that some are not. The cases
needing a check will be the rather fewer marginal ones and those where there is
cause for doubt.

But and it is
a very big but, there is the far more difficult question of many people coming
from high risk areas in which there are serious health issues, including
diseases that we have been desperate to eliminate in the past, especially where
new forms have developed.